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The Chip Board Archive 04

Ed Roth-Passed Away

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, whose

fantastic car creations and anti-hero Rat Fink character

helped define the California hotrod culture of the 1950s and

'60s, has died. He was 69.

Roth died Wednesday at his studio in Manti, Utah, said

Joe Bennett, a dispatcher with the Sanpete County

Sheriff's Department. The cause of death wasn't

immediately given.

A generation of teen-age rebels across the country found a

hero in Roth, whose chrome and fiberglass creations

stirred awe at car shows. Many adopted his airbrushed

anti-hero, the bug-eyed, menacing Rat Fink, who became

a cultural counterpoint to Mickey Mouse.

While Roth worked on custom cars in his garage-studio

near Los Angeles, youngsters across the country broke

out the airplane glue to work on intricate scale plastic

models of his "Outlaw" roadster, bubble-topped "Beatnik

Bandit," or futuristic "Mysterion."

As a designer, Roth was considered a genius and

visionary, not only for his radical designs, but also for his

pioneering use of fiberglass in car bodies.

He was described by author Tom Wolfe in his 1964 essay

"The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" as

the "most colorful, the most intellectual and the most

capricious" of the car customizers.

"He's the Salvador Dali of the movement -- a surrealist in

his designs, a showman by temperament, a prankster,"

Wolfe wrote.

Roth created Rat Fink and a host of wild characters to help

finance his car design work.

In 1974, he converted to the Mormon church and

abandoned his rebel lifestyle, however he continued to

work on car designs.

"My fanaticism with cars has just destroyed my personal

life," he told The Associated Press in a 1997 interview. "It's

an obsession, an addiction. Every day I pray to God,

`Release me from my calling!"'

David Chodosh, a friend and business associate, said Roth

was still working at the time of his death and was hoping to

tour a new car in 2002.

"The guy over the years has epitomized cool," Chodosh

said. "Even now, in so many ways, he is still the Boss

Fink."

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